Postal History

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Simply put, postal history is anything that has been through the mail with or without its content. This mail offers us a glimpse at our past, and there's something for everyone to identify with. It could be a letter from a descendant or place that means something to you. It could be an advertising cover from a business your family-owned or a topic that interests you, like oyster farming or businesses from New Orleans or other city or state that has meaning to you. There are as many topics as there are people interested in collecting this vast collectible category. Our inventory contains dozens of different types of postal history. State postal history, advertising covers, foreign destinations, scarce usages of stamps on cover, stampless covers, airmail, exposition, fancy cancels, and many others. As none of these were specifically made for collectors, some of them can be scarce and hard to find. We pay high prices for this material and are always looking to buy more.

When the post office issues a new stamp, it is most often designated a release on a specific date and in a specific city. Collectors place the new stamp on an envelope and it is canceled in that city on that date. Often, artwork (cachet) that relates somehow to the topic is printed hand-drawn on the envelope. We carry the country's largest inventory of fine and rare first day covers. We specialize in cachets of scarcer production numbers. We do not stock large houses such as Fleetwood, ArtCraft, House of Farnam, Ioor, Grimsland, Artmaster, Colorano, and Readers Digest, to name a few. We do have covers by Dorothy Knapp, Staehle, Weigand, Crosby, Adler, Enriques, Adler, Fluegel, and hundreds of other fine artists in our inventory. We have purchased some of the most important collections to come to market in the past several years and are always looking for better first-day cover collections.

Aerophilately is the study of airmail. This includes postal history, the actual commercial use of air transportation to deliver the mail, and philatelic airmail covers created to be collected. The first airmail flight from Chicago to St Louis by Lindbergh was announced, and collectors rushed to have a cover flown on this first flight. This is just one of tens of thousands of examples of a first flight cover. We carry CAMs, FAMs, Lindbergh, Government Flights, Pioneer Flights, Historical, Trans-oceanic, PAA Clipper, U.S. Airships and Zeppelin Flights, and many more. 

Postal stationery is a stationery item, such as a stamped envelope, letter sheet, postal card, lettercard, aerogram, or wrapper, with an imprinted stamp or inscription indicating that a specific rate of postage or related service has been prepaid. These are still sold at the post office today, and the first was issued in the 1850s. We carry postal cards, postal envelope entires, and letter sheets. We currently do not stock cut squares, which are postal envelopes that have been cut only to include the imprinted stamp. Our stock is arranged by UPSS number and priced accordingly. We welcome your want lists and are happy to provide mail order service.

We carry better U.S. Stamps. Typically $30-50 is the bottom of our range at this time. We are always looking to buy U.S. and worldwide stamp collections of any quality and quantity.

From Lawrence Sherman's book "United States Patriotic Envelopes of World War II": "Wartime envelope art allowed mailers to add a public message inside, uniting sender and receiver. These patriotic envelopes powerfully evoke the war as seen through American eyes. Their images show us directly how Americans experienced the war, reacted to it, and imagined it from the war's beginning in September 1939 to its end in Sept 1945. This is a wonderful book filled with references for over 11,000 of these covers.